Thursday 12 December 2013

The Giant Albion's Nightmare



The Giant Albion:
Nose, chin, brow, craggy features face the great Atlantic
Back arched north to south, strong as mountains, green as April
His round belly a patchwork of heaths & fields, moors & marshes
Limbs great limbs of old stone drawn forth from the ocean's floor
Ancient, wise
No little mad;
He’ll test your senses, your sense of humour.

His eyes; lakes, pools reflect all light
Sun stars & moon
Meteors & rainbows
Becks & burns, streams & brooks his blood system
His muscles, glacial clay
His organs whole families of hills
His folded potent skin
Scarred & healed, scarred & healed,
Raddled gnarly with life!
& all form!
All existences imagined virid green as his energetic song signature.

Mystery forests are his crown, his beard his great hairy back
The small hairs on his arms & belly soft pastures
Of wild grasses & bread fields
All filled with movement, song & diversity of form;
Legged non legged many legged winged burrowing
Those that swim, those that crawl,
Those that dance in the morning, those who only awaken at night;
His countless children, the inhabitants of the circle of Britannia.

But forth comes Beelzebub
The horizon demon, the lover of straight lines
Who forged cruel wheels within his own heart
To strengthen the grip of his iron razor-thorn hands
A man of metal risen from the steaming deep
Where the mare-of-night suckles her brood on shale gas,
Where blind things feed upon one another until they explode.
He's heavy with the lead weight tyranny of his fears
Moaning, groaning, keening, roaring to control everything
Father of the horde who see only with their fingers;
Takers, tinkerers, the maniac engineers of reality
Who worship only gravity.

Forth comes Beelzebub, spewing reinforced concrete
Draught excluders, light excluders
Hazing sweet chemical perfumes to hide the plastic stink of the decay beneath
His company mountainous, rolling juggernauts of metal,
Robot armies of the machine
Who gather in the shadow of factory towers
Bellowing heat to bake & burn.

Forth comes Beelzebub clad in the armour of self righteousness
Deals a body blow to the Giant Albion;
Winds his limbs in chains of smoking steel
Stuns him with meaningless words of clever power
Opens a mouth like a mile wide cauldron
To swallow bright waters into a world of culverts, tanks & drains.
His machine shovel hands rake messy, tangled nature into tiny reservations
His designers take the ruler, the set square, the pixel grid to the axis of life
Feast fattening the parasites, too stupid to see the slaughter houses
Lined up on rails jetting hungry steam, sharpening blades.

But the Giant Albion is crazy wise
Great tears of oily rain he cries
& shakes with pain, longs for release
But knows that this will never cease
Unless he understands it.

& the Giant Albion is crazy wise
He sees the fear in his enemy’s eyes
& gently tests the power there
While in the forests of his hair
Birds still serenade the sun.

The Giant Albion is crazy wise
Not a single bird can fall or rise
Hatch or die that he does not know
He sees wherever they come & go
& loves them.

& the Giant Albion is crazy wise
& all his children of any size
Who number millions throughout the land
Can also come to understand
A deeper power rules.

Crazy wise Giant Albion & all his children raise up their voices & sing
& when they go to sleep they go to sleep & dream sweet
& when they wake up they wake up & raise up their voices & sing again
They sing together the song of ancient life,
That never had a beginning, nor can it end
They sing together the song of ancient life,
That love has always woven in our blood
From oceans long ago in the heart wood of giant trees
A state of innocence denied to no living thing
That all may know & celebrate, but soon forget
When they become afraid of fear or are hurt by pain.

It is only thought that drives the wheel of Beelzebub's
Iron cold heart of teeth upon teeth of endless revolution
A single spark ignites the inevitable fuel leak
& the Master of the World is just a black cloud on the horizon that hid the sun for a moment
The Ruler of the Regulations is caught out by his own cleverness, he lacked craft
The Lord of Limitations reduced to a distant smear upon a vast & stainless sky of sea
Not a monster, nor a demon but a memory
Of how things once were, & a warning of how they could become.

The Giant Albion shakes off his chains & shouts thunder storms & dawn choruses of joy
His healing is in every step, his peace in every moment
His lake pond puddle eyes reflect the endlessness of space
His rocky highland shores make a smile upon his face
His hairy tummy had a good harvest of oats, wheat, barley & rye
His beard is inhabited by beavers.

The Giant Albion has forests for hair & he is crazy wise
His children share his appetite for the ridiculous & the sublime
We sing & dance in merry glades & await the sun to rise
& everyone who lives & moves, can learn the song, keep the time.

Sometimes we circle from right to left, heart to heart & hand in hand
To follow the sun & the seasons in their play
Sometimes we circle from left to right a spiral across the land
To place our feet on the ancient track, a hidden, hollow way.

The Giant Albion has forests for hair & he is crazy wise
His children share his appetite for the ridiculous & the sublime
We raise our voices together in a multitude of cries
Nature is a our rhythm & nature is our rhyme.

He’s our father & our brother, granddad, neighbour
Always been there & he'll never go away
So let’s honour old Albion in our love & our labour
Get out of the house, away from walls & await the coming day.